29. Contradicting Laws of Nature and All That
29. CONTRADICTING LAWS OF NATURE AND ALL THAT
ELOWYN
“Hurry, Reed, hurry,” I cried out.
He was almost finished corralling the undead. None of them had yet moved to answer the command of his magic, but they lit up like beacons when he pointed at them, and the paddock he’d delineated glowed as bright as lightning.
“Ignore the dragons,” I urged, though the suggestion was implausible. I’d grown up knowing exactly what an angry dragon who was about to pounce and rip your head off looked like—and I was now staring straight at two such beasts.
“Finish corralling the others,” Rush told Reed. “We’ll deal with the dragons.”
Only, how the sunshine would we?
“You can do it, El,” Rush told me next.
Mouth wide, I gawped at him. “Me?”
“Yes, dragon queen , you.”
“Uh…” I was about to tell him the obvious, that co nnecting with a few more-or-less kindly disposed dragons and speaking with them was an entirely different level of challenge from trying to discipline furious, murderous dragons who looked hangry enough to snack on all of us.
But no one else had even what scant experience I did with the creatures—save Xeno, of course, but the protectors revered the dragons in their charge, rarely communing with them how I had, if ever. None of my comrades had the backing of the land either. None had any chance of restraining the dragons beyond fighting them with blades or their powers, both of which we’d already proven to be ineffectual.
Could I even get undead dragons to obey me, when live ones weren’t disposed to do what I asked of them? Who the fuck knew? Saffron and Einar didn’t take orders from me. But it looked like I was going to be trying regardless of the odds. The one with dark orange scales was two-thirds the size of Einar, the other quite a bit smaller, only slightly bigger than Xeno when he shifted.
Instead of making my excuses, which I was really, really, really tempted to do, I silenced, nodded to reassure myself, breathed, then took a step toward the two dragons. Rush and Xeno shot out arms to stay me.
I frowned at their hands on me and snapped, “How am I supposed to do anything if you won’t let me put myself at risk?” My gaze traveled to their faces—their very concerned, anguished faces. I gentled my tone. “I’ll be okay. ”
I didn’t promise, however.
Rush’s brows drew together in torment but he released me.
Xeno did too with a growled, “You’d better be okay, Wyn. I swear I’ll fucking carve you out of their stomachs if you let them eat you.”
My smile was grisly. “They can’t eat me. They’re not alive.”
“Don’t remind me,” Xeno said with a deeply furrowed forehead.
Before Xeno or Rush could change his mind and reach for me again, I jumped forward, raised my hands to the dragons, and stopped in front of Tula, just out of her arm’s reach. Rush’s cousin, whom up until minutes ago I’d believed to be unharmed and alive, rocked from side to side so intently that her long, loose hair swung like a pendulum. Apparently the false queen’s edict that no female but she was allowed to wear her hair loose at her court didn’t apply once the female wouldn’t detract from Talisa’s carefully orchestrated allure.
“Dragons,” I called out, quickly cataloging their myriad injuries. The smaller green dragon in particular had more lacerations than smooth scales. The flesh of his legs and sides gaped open, sagging, and the barbed point of his tail was too small in comparison to the rest of him, as if it had been hacked off and then his body had attempted to regenerate. No doubt I’d discover more signs of his appalling abuse. The orange dragon, a female, had fewer outward signs of mistreatment, but she’d surely endured just as bad at Talisa’s command .
They only growled and gnashed their teeth, no less sharp than they’d been when they lived. The other undead were shuffling, one by one, toward Reed’s paddock.
“Fuerin,” I bellowed, trying the name they’d had before the creation of the Mirror World.
They didn’t react beyond their obvious desire to rend me to pieces.
I cast my voice through my mind into theirs. Fuerin! Stand down! We mean you no harm. We wish only to help you.
They continued with their gnarling and snapping and hissing.
I am so incredibly sorry you were hurt in such awful ways. By sunshine, how I wish that hadn’t been the case. But now at least I’d like to free you from the pain of your bodies. Wait, they were dead, or at least they looked dead. Surely they felt no more pain, right? I mean, I’ll help you leave your bodies for the Etherlands. I promise I will. I don’t know how to do it yet, not exactly, but I’ll find the way if there’s a way to be found.
The green dragon’s sissing intensified. His muscles bunching, he began undulating, that stubby barbed point thumping against the floor—back and forth, back and forth, then back and forth again. He stomped his feet—rumbling the flagstone—an action that would have been incomprehensibly painful with the many deep cuts that opened his legs and haunches until I could see bone. But the dragon’s demeanor didn’t change. He was animated by a force that defied every law of nature.
The orange she-dragon inhaled sharply, powerfully—as dragons did when they prepared to exhale fire—very lethal, singeing fire.
“El,” Rush yelled.
“Wyn,” Xeno shouted.
Several of the others echoed my name. But the dead didn’t breathe, now did they? Still, contradicting laws of nature and all that…
I darted out of the way and crouched near Rush and Xeno, the path to them clear now that Reed had finished corralling the undead fae.
“Everyone, back up, back up,” Xeno commanded. “Her range’ll be a good fifty feet.”
The room wasn’t much larger than that. We scurried back, ducking behind the many undead contained by Reed’s magic.
The she-dragon opened her mouth at the top of her long inhale.
My muscles tensed.
She unleashed a stream of … smoke. Puffy, fluffy smoke incapable of searing the flesh from our bones.
Xeno groaned his relief and straightened, adjusting his grip on his blade to scratch his head with a knuckle. “The only good thing about them being dead.”
I stood too. “It’s all just sad, so terribly sad.”
“Were you able to reach them?”
“Does it look like I was able to reach them?”
“Nope,” Xeno said with a popping p .
“Exactly.” My shoulders were heavy with defeat. “I don’t think I can connect with them once they’re dead. They didn’t react to me at all. Not even sure they were hearing me.”
“That makes sense,” Xeno said. But truly, what about any of this made any kind of sense at all?
“So … they look scary as, well, angry-ass dragons,” I continued, “but they can’t actually harm us?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Ivar said.
As one, we looked at him.
He shrugged. “Talisa wouldn’t send them after us without good reason.”
“Is scaring the Ethers out of us reason enough?” Azariah asked in a shaky rasp. He tossed his mane nervously, and a puff of rainbow-tinted air spurted from his wide nostrils. “I don’t think my constitution will ever be the same after this.” The unisus stood so close to the ranucu that not even a ray of light wedged between their bodies.
“Ivar,” I said. “Do you have any ideas? What should we do?” As little as a week ago I would have never believed I’d be asking the male who’d defended Talisa at every opportunity for help—more so, that he might actually offer it.
He linked both hands behind his neck while he studied the dragons on the opposite side of the room. Eventually, he exhaled with a flutter of his lips that sounded like a bird taking off in flight. “I have no idea.”
“Oh great, thanks so much,” Ryder said with a scowl. “What a load of help. ”
“Hey,” Ivar snapped. “I can’t know things I don’t know any more than you can.”
Ryder waggled his jaw back and forth but didn’t concede the point. I was also experiencing bubbling irritation that we were so unsure when the stakes were so damn high.
“There’s one thing I do know with absolute certainty though,” Ivar added. “Talisa is the source of all of it.” He gestured to the fae and magical creatures she hadn’t granted peace even in their deaths. “She’s behind whatever’s doing this to all of them. We find her … we kill her … and all this ends.”
I found myself nodding, feeling myself drawn to her instead of the dungeons as planned. “We get past whatever distraction she throws our way as quickly as we can. We only stop once we see her ugly mug.”
“I think so, El,” Rush said. His gaze went from me to the dragons and back again, his moonlit eyes a well of sorrow that I felt in my own heart.
I chuckled darkly. “Figures, the only time I’m here at the palace and want to see her is the one time she hides from us.”
“From you ,” Ivar said.
“Huh?”
“She’s feared you since you first arrived in Embermere. Even though now I’m certain bringing you here must have been her plan all along.”
“Why?” I heard myself asking in a soft tone that betrayed how much I still wanted answers about my existence I was unlikely to ever get. “Why would she influence the king to bring me here if she’s been trying to kill me ever since? Surely she could have asked that asshole Dougal to kill me in Nightguard and be done with it.”
“Thank sunshine she didn’t,” Xeno said, his blue-green eyes tumultuous as a churning, stormy ocean.
“I can’t be sure, Elowyn,” Ivar said, my name seeming to vibrate from his lips; it was the first time he’d ever uttered it without an accompanying sneer of disdain. “But I’d guess her plans for you didn’t end with your death.” He cast a meaningful look at the undead standing between us and the dragons. “If Talisa stole power from all four of her sisters, from our sisters ”—he glanced at Rush—“and you are the heir the land has chosen to rule the Mirror World, what might she have done to you?”
Rush’s body tightened so suddenly and furiously that his wompa fighting leathers actually creaked.
Without my consent, fear skittered across my flesh leaving behind goose pimples. When we’d first arrived at the palace, the dulling to my senses, had that been Talisa trying to somehow affect my autonomy? Was I at her mercy even now? If I were to fall to her thrall in any way… I bit my lip against the thought. There might be no one left to ever free me.
I glanced at the dead who’d once had hopes, joys, and also fears of their own. Who’d had lives with paths uniquely theirs.
Until she had come along .
Resolve skittered down my spine. “Reed, will you try to corral the dragons with the others?”
“Not sure it’ll work, but yeah, I’ll try.”
While he did that, I closed my eyes to shut out the grim sights and reached for Einar. How’s it going out there? Is Saffron safe?
An entire minute passed before I received an answer. It was long enough for sweat to bead along my hairline with a litany of possibilities, all of them hideous.
The small fuerin is demanding and misbehaved, but lives. The battle rages. There have been many losses on both sides. But I will soon finish off any who dare defy me.
Save those who can be saved.
I will save only those without evil. The shadow and its darkness must end.
There are two fuerin here with us. They’re … dead.
Dead? he growled in a deep bass, like a large stone tumbling along a riverbed.
Worse than dead, I’m sorry to tell you.
He waited for more. His mounting rage bridged our connection.
They’re … animated.
Animated ?
As in, they’ve been brought back to life through some sort of dark magic. Blood magic, Ivar thinks.
More long seconds passed before he said, That is not life. That is the worst kind of darkness.
Yes, I whispered along our bond. I’m so sorry, Einar.
Where are you? His question was a curt command.
I’m not really sure. Hold on. I asked Rush, then relayed: We’re on the ground level at the northwest side of the palace, nearly at the back. Rush added details. Near the silver rose garden.
I looked at Reed. Though the dragons were illuminated from his magic, when he pointed at them and signaled that they should enter his corral, they resisted with a defiant strength that rattled the windows and floors.
Can you help us with the fuerin? I asked Einar. We don’t know what to do.
Leave them to me. I will free them from their prison. I am on my way.
There are a bunch of us in here with the fuerin, I cautioned. Don’t, you know, kill us while you do whatever it is you’re going to do.
Huuuuh. Huuuuh.
Einar!
What, little one?
You’re not gonna kill us, right?
I will kill only shadows.
“It’s not working!” Reed grunted, his face puce from effort.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Einar’s on his way to deal with them. We should go.”
Reed let out a breath. “I can’t. My magic requires me to be with the corral for it to work.”
“Oh,” I said lamely. “Well … maybe they won’t follow once we leave the room?”
The darkness will always follow until it is destroyed, Einar said while Ivar added aloud, “They’ll follow. Talisa would have made certain of it.”
Reed’s eyes squinted from strain. “I’ll stay.”
“No, Reed—” I started.
Hiroshi interrupted, “I’ll remain with him.” The drake withdrew a second sword and stalked to Reed’s side. “He may need protection.”
“But…” I said. But what? We couldn’t very well focus on the false queen when we had a battalion of her undead chasing after us.
“We’ll stay too,” Azariah offered.
“Az?” I asked, unable to conceal my surprise. “Are you sure?”
His tail twitched nervously, his nostrils quivered, and his thick lower lip visibly shook. “I’m sure.” His voice squeaked before he cleared his throat. “Bertram will stay with me.”
Bolt and Ivar’s horse clopped closer.
“And Bolt and Niran, too.”
“I’m going with you,” Xeno told me.
“And me too, obviously,” Rush added right away.
“And me!” Zafi’s squeaky voice announced from the air behind me.
In less than a minute, my friends had divided themselves up: Hiroshi, Roan, Azariah, Bertram, Bolt, and Niran—Ivar’s steed, apparently—would remain with Reed to keep the undead locked in their pen. Rush, Xeno, Ryder, West, Pru, Edsel, Zafi, and Ivar would come with me.
“We’ll join you as soon as we can,” Hiroshi said, but the somber way he was studying his brothers suggested he was considering the very real possibility that he might never see any of us again.
With the handle of his battleax, Roan tapped the bridle around his head. “Give ’er the furious fire of an entire clan of angry dragons for us, won’t ya? You especially, lass. Make her regret ever hurting a single essence.”
“You got it, Roan,” I said with a confidence that wasn’t exactly warranted but that I needed to do whatever came next. “For Rompa-Romp and everyone else.”
“We’ll see you very soon,” Rush told those we were leaving behind with a heavy solemness that sounded too much like a promise I wasn’t sure we’d be able to keep.
From beyond the double doors on the opposite side of the hall, heavy, shaking footfalls suddenly thudded. Brutish, rumbling shouts, “For queenie,” attached them to pygmy ogres.
With a foreboding grimace, I drew a pair of sai s. They weren’t my personal blades from Nightguard, but they were better than Dougal’s dagger or anything else I’d gotten my hands on since Talisa first ordered my weapons confiscated.
“No.” Rush laid his fingers on my arm. “We have to go.”
“But—”
“Go,” Hiroshi told me. “We’ll buy you as much time as we can.”
Worry pricked along my nape. I sheathed my sais in spite of it.
The high windows along one wall shattered. Then the massive claws of a familiar black dragon bent around the frames of two of the windows, cracking the wood of their sills.
Several of us will stay here to keep the fae undead from attacking, I told Einar in a rush. Please take care with them.
Huuuuh .
Behind Einar, the sky of mid-morning darkened rapidly, a roiling tempest concealing the fluffy white clouds and bright-blue sky of moments before.
The shadow comes, Einar said.
I know. Besides the outward signs of her drawing proximity, I felt her. Which meant I now knew exactly in which direction to go.
“We go that way.” I pointed toward the double doors that were about to be ripped open by the foul, stupid beasts who’d gnawed Hiroshi’s arm off, who’d do any dark deed their queenie asked of them.
To their credit, none of my companions hesitated—not even Pru, whose days of wringing her hands and fretting about it being off with our heads seemed to belong to someone else’s past, her expression presently grim and determined. When I ran toward the doors instead of seeking an alternative to this immediate danger, they flanked and followed.
“Ivar,” I said as my steps squeaked on the polished hardwood floor that was about to be befouled. “Once we get clear, I want you, Ryder, and whoever wants to go with you, to head down to the dungeons. We need to free those dragons. I’ll find the false queen.”
If they thought anything of my altered course, they didn’t voice it. A sai back in hand, I verified that Pru and Edsel were behind us warriors, then yanked one of the doors open while Rush did the other.
On the other side, with her crown perched perfectly atop her head … stood Talisa.
Dozens of soldiers dressed in the sky-blue tunics that denoted them her personal guard were lined up behind her. A dozen pygmy ogres, some with blood smearing their mouths and hands, all with blood staining their clubs, towered to either side of her.
Her lips were painted an identical hue, and glistened. She licked them before her attention landed on Ivar. Her ice-cold eyes grew icier.
“You. Traitor.”
I expected Ivar, the kiss-ass, to flinch. He didn’t.
“I could say the same about you.”
Talisa stared at him while her sentinels held steady. Finally, she said, “You’ll die today.”
Ivar’s responding smile was as wicked as hers. “No. You will.” I’d never before heard him speak to her without an ingratiating Your Majesty or Your Highness .
Based on the tightening of her lips, eyes, and jawline, Talisa was noticing how much had changed too. “We’ll see about that,” she said, then looked at my companions, at the corralled undead at our backs, before landing on Rush. Her eyes blazed but she made no comment.
Next her attention descended on me. “Now that no rules bind me, I will kill you myself.”
I drew my second sai.
She threw her head back and laughed, a melodic roll that was disorienting for how normal and pleasant it sounded. “Once I’ve killed you, I think in time I may come to miss your ridiculously unwarranted bravado.”
“You won’t be around to miss me.”
“So sure of yourself.” She trilled some more.
I shrugged, cracked my neck, and lunged for her.
When I should have pressed sharp metal to her throat, she was gone. Just … gone.
The space where she’d only just stood … was empty. I caught sight of a swirl of black gossamer skirts at the far end of the gallery that opened up beyond the doors.
I blinked again. Even that glimpse of her vanished.
“She moves too fast,” Xeno snarled, his voice by my ear. “It’s not normal.”
“No, it’s not,” I bit out as the pygmy ogre nearest me shattered the stunned stillness at the false queen’s sudden disappearance, and lumbered toward me.
Rush jumped forward to take him on. Xeno did the same with a second pygmy ogre, who was mumbling, “ For queenie, for queenie ,” in a disturbingly childlike voice.
I sensed Talisa dashing through the palace, her unsettlingly seductive laughter trailing her advance. I cut a path through the guards, who stood aside to let me through—not reassuring at all—before closing in behind me.
“El!” Rush exclaimed, but then he was caught up in battle. The cries were already furious, the clank of blades and other weapons loud.
I glanced back a final time. Rush, Xeno, and the other fighters were taking on several opponents at a time. Hiroshi and Roan were running from Reed’s side to offer aid.
Pru, Edsel, and presumably Zafi skirted along the side of the skirmish unnoticed. The goblins used their powers to fade into the walls. The MISO remained invisible.
The faint trail of Talisa’s laughter, which I suspected only I heard, lured me forward. Perhaps it always needed to be this way. One queen against another.
My destiny.
As the wall of windows crashed behind me, and I glimpsed Einar landing inside the room with the corral, I bolted after Talisa. The pitter-patter of two pairs of goblin feet, one of them made of wompa leather, followed on my heels.
“Forgive me, Rush,” I whispered, though over the din he would never hear me.